Second Life Artist Recreates Gandhi’s ‘Salt March’

Artist Joseph DeLappe’s Second Life recreation of Gandhi’s 1930 "Salt March" may lack the original’s political meaning, but it makes up for it in sheer ironic parody.

The original event was a 240-mile trek protesting British control, but DeLappe’s version, in which he’ll walk 240 miles on a specially designed treadmill that will beam his steps to an avatar in Second Life, is almost the funhouse mirror version of Gandhi’s march.

"I’m a spoiled American computer artist paying tribute to Gandhi’s life and philosophy by taking on certain aspects of his march, like the walking," he says. "But at the same time, I’m not going anywhere."

Previously, DeLappe was most famous for a virtual protest against the Iraq War in which he typed the names of dead service personnel into the chat window of free recruiting-tool-turned-game America’s Army. This protest is still sporadically ongoing.

Whether you see DeLappe’s work as a cleverly self-referential take on the importance of the virtual space as compared to our current real world, or you think he’s a pretentious ass for making light of the efforts of a great man like Gandhi, you can’t deny this is an interesting use of the virtual world.